71 replies to this topic

[Nightbird]

Play the flea only for a season and share with us the broken OP stats of a flea. If you can't, maybe you are just imagining things.

[General Solo]

Many assault pilots just are not very good.
Reminds me of the elephant and the mouse
In Tom and Jerry Cartons

[Heavenward]

Fleas are the epitome of high risk, high reward play.

That said (and i might be alone in feeling this) when piloting a flea there is always that fear that instant death can occur at any time. One steak boat or atm boat (when using flea 17) will end the game for you if your not aware.

If your having trouble hitting a flea along with streaks try using LBX auto-canons, they will rip of flea legs quite well.

[Brauer]

Heavenward, on 06 September 2020 - 05:11 AM, said:

Fleas are the epitome of high risk, high reward play.

That said (and i might be alone in feeling this) when piloting a flea there is always that fear that instant death can occur at any time. One steak boat or atm boat (when using flea 17) will end the game for you if your not aware.

If your having trouble hitting a flea along with streaks try using LBX auto-canons, they will rip of flea legs quite well.

I'd point more toward piranhas and srm bomber lights like the Jenner IIC as the epitome of high-risk/high-reward as they are squishier and have higher firepower, but overall lights are high-risk/high-reward, and I think a key learning for light players is that death can come at any point, so you have to constantly move and be aware of potential threats.

[Lykaon]

Lucifaust, on 04 September 2020 - 11:43 AM, said:

Hello,

I repeatedly notice fleas are overpowered in public games.

People are complaining constantly because these mechs particular combo of speed, small hitboxes and large amount of energy firepower are too far above everyone else.

I agree, fleas are extremely hard to hit unless standing still.

Assaults and heavies frequently run and cower from a single flea. Their hitboxes, and tankiness from small hitboxes, are their primary reason for OPness. I suggest larger hitboxes to balance the mech more fairly.

in b4 'i play a flea so it isn't op.'

Fleas are op. Discuss.

I do not agree and here are the reasons.

A Flea's defense is evasion not armor. If you hit a Flea with any significant firepower you have likely inflicted serious damage.
Here is the thing about evasion based defense. It does not scale equally against all players. In the nutshell a Flea gets more out of evasion when the opponent is less accurate and significantly lower effects when your opponents are true marksmen.

The Offense of a Flea is in the most commonly used builds extremely close ranged.At close range your opponents accuracy is likely enhanced by simple virtue that hitting a Flea that is close is easier than hitting one far away.

The combination of evasion based defense with close quarters offense is a fairly even trade in my opinion.

There are some additional techniques to reduce the effects of evasion based defenses.

Have back up close by. A Flea pilot may have an easy time of keeping out of it's target's sights but it won't have the same success if targeted by a second opponent.

When you are likely to become singled out by a Flea and lack the mobility to get to the safety of your teammates seek out tight terrain. When you restrict the Fleas mobility you restrict it's defenses.When I did pilot my light mechs I would disengage from a target that positioned themselves in restrictive terrain,most skilled light mech pilots will do the same.

You have probably heard the tactic of "aim for the legs" but the more effective target is aim high on the legs aim for the hips. The reason for this is the lower down on the leg you aim the wider the mech's stride is and the higher the probability of shooting between the legs. At the hip there is little to no stride gap.

When turning to target a circling light mech don't match the direction of the light mech's travel instead counter rotate. If the light is circling clockwise turn your mech counter clockwise to meet it as it completes a circle. Chasing something you can't catch is stupid so instead head them off by counter rotating.If you reverse and counter rotate you have an even higher chance of putting the target in front and in your sites.

[Lykaon]

Nightbird, on 05 September 2020 - 11:47 AM, said:

Play the flea only for a season and share with us the broken OP stats of a flea. If you can't, maybe you are just imagining things.

There is something called confirmation bias.

Players don't remember the Flea that explodes in a spectacular fashion in the early game doing very little damage. It was a speed bump at best.

They do remember the Unsquishable tiny murder machine though. it doesn't matter if the Flea pilot is 50/50 on these outcomes the victims only get frustrated when the Flea is successful.

[Nightbird]

Lykaon, on 06 September 2020 - 10:09 PM, said:

There is something called confirmation bias.

Players don't remember the Flea that explodes in a spectacular fashion in the early game doing very little damage. It was a speed bump at best.

They do remember the Unsquishable tiny murder machine though. it doesn't matter if the Flea pilot is 50/50 on these outcomes the victims only get frustrated when the Flea is successful.

https://mwomercs.com...nfair-nerf-now/

[OneTeamPlayer]

Since early in the game players who have more tonnage in weapons in one arm than lights have armor on their entire mech have been complaining about how "overpowered" light mechs are.

They complained so often and so loudly that light mechs were "fixed" to the point that only 5 out of dozens of chassis of light mech are seen these days with most of the original mechs altered so badly as to be unusable (looking at you Jenners).

You can always tell the light mechs that are just barely functional because a certain type of player talks about them as if they are unstoppable gods and they are almost always the people who play the most heavily armored, largest possible weapons choice mechs.

Nothing is forcing a player not to have armor in their rear, by the way, but on that note most assaults can put more armor on their rear than lights have on their front components and still have as much armor on the front as the tankiest heavies (and often more).

Rather than using their options to maximize their performance after being provided a mechlab that allows players to tweak their own mechs in literally hundreds of was, a certain type of player would prefer to copy-paste the same build, change nothing about their own playstyle, then depend on developers to remove any threat to their giant weapons platform rather than using skill, teamwork, build, positioning, or any of the other options and considering lights an interesting challenge to the huge benefit that is having the most of everything in the game besides speed.

I'm not sure what it is about players who choose the biggest tankiest choices in some games that makes them so unwilling to deal with challenges that are absolutely normal to every other class in their game to the point they want any threat removed but it's a sad phenomena to watch. Saw a similar mindset at work in World of Warships where battleships had huge advantages and still complained about any possible fighting chance smaller ships had until over time they were nerfed into oblivion.

Come to think of it it's interesting to note what happens to games who cater to their whiny "Big Tanky" players then nerf all the lighter, more nimble options for the benefit of one section of their players. Allow players to unbalance a game with their whining directly leads to a large number of players simply quitting the game (all the players of the classes that got nerfed) then the "big tankies" getting mad that their are either no players to shoot or that there are too many of the "big tankie" type (the type that they themselves ensured would be the last standing).

Give most gamers enough rope and they'll strangle the diversity, creativity, and life out of any solid system I guess.

[Fae Puka]

It's more the combination of aspects that has thrown the Flea into focus;

• Chronically small scaling compared to other mechs - Jenner used to be great until they made it the height of most heavies, just look back at the rescaling debacle.
  
• MASC - fast mech to begin with, but with the right latency, makes a huge difference.
  
• Any half decent pilot can leg-hump like a chihuahua on heat and be completely hidden under larger mech's declination, even using unlocked arms.
  
• ECM
  
• Stealth
  
• The ability to apply god-boxes and walk through fire if doing more than half speed.

To be honest, it almost feels like cheating when I play a Flea and purposely single out the taller or badly nerfed assaults that had there engines/mobility desynced, which is probably more of a problem than the Flea being an "outstanding" mech.


TTK adjustments mean that even if you do back into a safer part of the terrain, because even 30 damage will dissolve the rear of most mechs that have ended up front armour loaded, once in the more protected position your "team" often keeps nascaring and the rest of the Flea pilots' team end up with a static duck shoot and you are the easy pickings.

Edited by MummyPig, 07 September 2020 - 07:40 AM.

[Scout Derek]

MummyPig, on 07 September 2020 - 07:38 AM, said:

• Chronically small scaling compared to other mechs - Jenner used to be great until they made it the height of most heavies, just look back at the rescaling debacle.

You mean the Jenner IIC, size wise. Regular Jenner is fine and might be seen more if it's arm armor wasn't equivalent to that of a commando/flea.

MummyPig, on 07 September 2020 - 07:38 AM, said:

• MASC - fast mech to begin with, but with the right latency, makes a huge difference.

Yes, and yet the MASC is limited; it legit breaks the mech hitboxes damage registration due to moving beyond 170KPH for the most part. Any less and you can still hit it without loss of damage or hitreg, funnily enough even with MASC if you slap them with a good shot you can still kill them, they're not tanky like a commando, their legs are very easy to hit due to having no wide boy arms as the Commando does to shield itself properly.

MummyPig, on 07 September 2020 - 07:38 AM, said:

• ECM
  
• Stealth

Things that are there to give people with less than average skill trouble. Anyone with half a brain and some game sense will figure out where they're being shot from by a flea.

MummyPig, on 07 September 2020 - 07:38 AM, said:

• The ability to apply god-boxes and walk through fire if doing more than half speed.

See reply to MASC.

MummyPig, on 07 September 2020 - 07:38 AM, said:

To be honest, it almost feels like cheating when I play a Flea and purposely single out the taller or badly nerfed assaults that had there engines/mobility desynced, which is probably more of a problem than the Flea being an "outstanding" mech.

It's an outstanding mech but not for the reasons you think; People can't aim, so you can legit just power through people and destroy them. The flea is meant to be a aggro/distraction mech; You tickle their rears, they turn around, your team (hopefully) destroys them for being distracted. You use it to break down LRM mechs that are pooping on your team (figuratively and literally), and gimp their DPS via side torso strip, then you move onto the next target.

MummyPig, on 07 September 2020 - 07:38 AM, said:

TTK adjustments mean that even if you do back into a safer part of the terrain, because even 30 damage will dissolve the rear of most mechs that have ended up front armour loaded, once in the more protected position your "team" often keeps nascaring and the rest of the Flea pilots' team end up with a static duck shoot and you are the easy pickings.

If the team nascars they're already easy pickings regardless if there's fleas present or not.

[Warning incoming Humble Dexterer]

Lucifaust, on 04 September 2020 - 11:43 AM, said:

Fleas are op. Discuss.

Fleas/lights are weak against streaks.
Streaks are weak against... everything but lights really.
If there's too many lights, it suggests there's not enough streaks.

[dario03]

Warning incoming Humble Dexterer, on 07 September 2020 - 01:20 PM, said:

Fleas/lights are weak against streaks.
Streaks are weak against... everything but lights really.
If there's too many lights, it suggests there's not enough streaks.

In my experience there has been way to many lock-on weapons around lately. An lrm boat or two on a team is fine but lately it seems like 50-75% of teams are lock ons. Which might explain how we get these threads. Players expect the games oddly balanced streaks to auto win vs lights for them but when ecm/stealth (or min range on atms) stop that from happening they don't know what to do because they haven't learned how to shoot lights with anything else.

[Y E O N N E]

dario03, on 07 September 2020 - 02:25 PM, said:

they don't know what to do because they haven't learned how to shoot lights with anything else.

ftfy

[CFC Conky]

dario03, on 07 September 2020 - 02:25 PM, said:

In my experience there has been way to many lock-on weapons around lately. An lrm boat or two on a team is fine but lately it seems like 50-75% of teams are lock ons. Which might explain how we get these threads. Players expect the games oddly balanced streaks to auto win vs lights for them but when ecm/stealth (or min range on atms) stop that from happening they don't know what to do because they haven't learned how to shoot lights with anything else.

Event going on that requires a certain amount of damage bringing out the lock-on missile crowd?

[dario03]

CFC Conky, on 07 September 2020 - 04:40 PM, said:

Event going on that requires a certain amount of damage bringing out the lock-on missile crowd?

Its been going on for longer than that though. Mostly just to easy to get big numbers because of the high damage, low heat, high ammo count, mostly auto aim balance on the lock on weapons.

[ShiverMeRivets]

The main issue with the 20 tonners are their stupid physics defying accelerations. OK their scaling is out of whack too, but that will not be fixed now. A 20 ton mech accelerates so fast that they make F-1 racing cars go hide under a rock in shame. The MASCed flee is just over-the-top stupid in this regard. Accelerations include turning accelerations (turn rated at high speeds).

Another thing is inflated number of hardpoints. Low tonnage mechs tend to get a large number of hardpoints. So, you get 20-25 ton mechs with 6-8 hardpoints that make some 40 ton mechs green with envy. Of course the absolute offender is the piranah, but that is an outlier even for a clan mech. A small IS laser has nearly the same dps as IS medium laser. Clan MGs and small lasers are so light that tiny mechs have no problem boating 8 or 10 (or 16...) of them. As a result, 20-25 ton mechs often (not always) carry just about the same fire power as mechs twice their tonnage or more, at least from a short range.

This erratic movement pattern, combined with favorable speed per engine rating, combined with their under-scaling, combined with inflated firepower for their size is what made the 35 ton light mechs endangered species.

Yes I am a 20 ton hater.

[General Solo]

Fleas OP due to hitreg on fast mechs being a problem.
Commando is the same
Pirhana's are much slower and a lot easier to kill.

[Sjorpha]

Never seemed op to me, I would need som pretty convincing statistics to accept that claim.

[General Solo]

I agree they not OP
Just giving my opinion why they are troublesome for many.

[Darian DelFord]

Now I have seen everything...... A Flea is OP Thread........

Welp I will just leave this link here then. If you actually watch the video's you will see that the vast majority of times I take advantage of my opponents COMPLETE AND UTTER LACK OF SITUATIONAL AWARENESS......

https://mwomercs.com...rians-flea-fun/



Oh Yeah lets not forget this match either.......